Gentle Persuaders Utah's First Women Legislators

Vol. 38, 1970, No. 1

Dr. Martha HughesUtah State Senator.

Gentle Persuaders Utah's First Women Legislators

BY JEAN BICKMORE WHITE

THE NIGHT OF NOVEMBER 3, 1896, marked the end of an election that is probably unsurpassed in the state's history for intense interest and bitter division over a major issue. It also marked the end of a race that attracted national attention-—a contest for a state Senate seat that involved a prominent Mormon polygamist and his fourth wife.

The major issue in the election was silver, one that split Utah Republicans into two rival camps and badly hampered their campaign efforts.

Adding a note of human interest to the election, Utah's first since statehood, was a contest in the Sixth Senatorial District in Salt Lake County, where Angus M. Cannon, Sr., and his physician wife, Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon, were competing.

Ten candidates were running "at large" for the district's five seats, five nominated by the Republicans and five on a Democratic-Populist fusion ticket. Voters were free to vote for any five — all Democrats, all Republicans, or any mixture they might choose. It was not true, as has often been stated, that Dr. Cannon and her husband were running directly against each other. Both could have won seats, or both could have lost. But they were in a lively contest, with Democrats benefiting from strong sentiment for William Jennings Bryan at the head of their ticket. It is small wonder, as the daughter of Angus M. and Martha Hughes Cannon has recalled, that her father was "sweating blood" on election night as he waited for the returns. Two proud and strong-willed individuals were in a contest where someone's pride was likely to be hurt.

When the returns were in, Dr. Cannon was one of the five Democrats elected in the district, having polled 11,413 votes. Her husband, who was expected to benefit by his prominence as president of the Salt Lake Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, drew only 8,742 votes. Dr. Cannon ran behind the rest of the Democratic-Populist ticket, while her husband ran ahead of all but one of the five Republican candidates. Also running on the Republican ticket was one of Dr. Cannon's personal friends and a co-worker for many years in the woman suffrage movement, Emmeline B. Wells.

Dr. Cannon had become the first woman state senator in the United States in a contest with both her husband and a close friend — a dramatic beginning for a legislative career.

During the campaign this contest had attracted considerable attention, with two daily newspapers lining up on opposite sides. The Salt Lake Tribune, which was Republican oriented, supported Angus M. Cannon, while the Democratic Salt Lake Herald supported his wife. The public followed the contest with some amusement through the pages of the two newspapers. In response to a Herald writer's suggestion that Dr. Cannon would be the better choice as a legislator, the Tribune offered some advice to her husband: "We do not see anything for Augus M. to do but to either go home and break a bouquet over Mrs. Cannon's head, to show his superiority, or to go up to the Herald office and break a chair over the head of the man who wrote that disturber of domestic peace."

Women also won other legislative contests in Utah. In elections for the state House of Representatives, two women competed in Salt Lake County, one in Weber County, and one in Utah County. Two Democratic candidates won: Mrs. Sarah E. Anderson of Ogden and Mrs. Eurithe K. LaBarthe of Salt Lake City.

In the Third Senatorial District, which included Davis, Rich, and Morgan counties, a prominent Republican woman, Mrs. Lucy A. Clark, was defeated by Aquila Nebeker, a Democratic rancher, for the district's only Senate seat. During the campaign, Nebeker was candid about the agony he would suffer if he should happen to lose to a woman. "I am in an awkward position," he told a Tribune reporter. "If I don't get out, people will say I am frightened. If I do make a struggle for the place, the same people will declare that I am fighting a woman. Then if I win, no one will concede that any credit is due me, while defeat would make me the laughing stock of the whole state."

It seems that the presence of women in Utah's first statewide election was not accepted with complete equanimity, despite the fact that three women were elected to the legislature and eleven women were elected to the position of county recorder. All of the women legislative candidates ran behind their tickets, which may indicate that many Utah voters were not yet willing to accept women in legislative halls.

By the time Utah gained statehood, women had had some practical experience as party workers and voters. Utah women had voted in territorial days, from 1870 until they were deprived of the vote by the Edmunds-Tucker Act in 1887. Women had served on party committees, had formed political clubs, and had been wooed with promises of suffrage by both major parties when delegates to the 1895 constitutional convention were chosen.

During the convention, delegates were often reminded of those pledges, not only by the speakers but by the determined suffragists who crowded around the convention hall and listened to the debates with intense interest. One of the most vocal champions of woman suffrage was Orson F. Whitney, a prominent Mormon leader and historian, who pictured women's participation in politics as a giant leap toward purification of government and society. Denying that women were meant only to be mothers and housekeepers, Whitney went on to say:

I believe the day will come when through that very refinement, the elevating and ennobling influence which woman exerts, in conjunction with other agencies that are at work for the betterment of the world, all that is base and unclean in politics . . . will be "burnt and purged away," and the great result will justify woman's present participation in the cause of reform .... It is woman's destiny to have a voice in theaffairs of government. She was designed for it. She has a right to it. This great social upheaval, this woman's movement that is making itself heard and felt, means something more than that certain women are ambitious to vote and hold office. I regard it as one of the great levers by which the Almighty is lifting up this fallen world, lifting it nearer to the throne of its Creator. . . ,

Whitney was answering the arguments of many who opposed placing the woman suffrage clause in the new constitution — most notably the popular Mormon official and orator, B. H. Roberts. During the course of the debates over this issue, some of the misgivings about women in politics were voiced, and some of the problems of woman suffrage peculiar to Utah were brought into the open.

It should be realized that the woman suffrage issue was interwoven with the long Mormon- Gentile struggle for electoral strength during the territorial period. The law granting women the vote in territorial elections was passed in 1870 with the active support of Brigham Young. It was opposed by non-Mormons generally in the territory and was challenged in territorial courts on at least two occasions. The provision of the Edmunds-Tucker Act in 1887 withdrawing the right of woman suffrage seems to have sprung from a desire to reduce the number of Mormon voters and to add to the weight of non-Mormons (particularly that of such single men as miners and railroad workers ) in Utah politics. Through the years, the woman suffrage movement in Utah had had the blessing of the First Presidency of the Mormon church; the wives of aspostles had been among its leaders. By 1895 the issue of woman suffrage was one that divided many — but by no means all — Mormons and non-Mormons. One of the main arguments of B. H. Roberts against the inclusion of woman suffrage in the constitution was that it would cause non-Mormons (as well as those Mormons who were not enthusiastic about having women vote) to vote against the new constitution and end Utah's hopes for statehood.

According to Apostle Abraham H. Cannon, members of the church First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve Apostles were divided over the question of including a woman suffrage article in the state constitution, fearing that "agitation" of the issue would open old Mormon-Gentile political wounds and lead to the rejection of the constitution and statehood.

There could be little fear that women would "take over" political life by sheer numbers. In 1890 United States Census reports showed that males in the territory outnumbered females by a substantial margin, 110,463 to 97,442. By 1895 the territorial census showed a population of 126,803 males and 120,521 females, still a comfortable edge for the masculine population in the unlikely event that a political issue should sharply divide the sexes.

Instead, delegates to the convention voiced fears that women would not act independently in political life but would obey the dictation of husbands and fathers. It was also asserted that women were of a "higher" nature, not suited to enter the political jungle. Some predicted that women would lose their finer virtues and be "unsexed" in the process of gaining political rights, becoming deeply involved in political life and destroying the tranquility of their homes. No less a personage than Cardinal Gibbons was quoted by Roberts, warning against the extension of political rights to women:

Christian wives and mothers, I have said you are the queens of the domestic kingdom. If you would retain that empire, shun the political arena, avoid the rostrum, beware of unsexing yourselves. If you become embroiled in political agitation the queenly aureola that encircles your brow will fade away and the reverence that is paid you will disappear. If you have the vain ambition of reigning in public life, your domestic empire will be at an end.

Cardinal Gibbons's remarks seem to be directed beyond the question of woman suffrage to the question of women seeking the power of political office. In 1895 no one knew how many would seek office — or what they would try to accomplish if they won. Would they, as some predicted, lose their femininity and destroy their homes? Would they act independently or obey their husbands' wishes? Would they be militant reformers, trying to impose "radical" programs on the state? Or would they simply fail to do anything constructive if they gained political office?

Some observations relating to these questions were made after less than two decades of statehood by a prominent Utah woman, Mrs. Susa Young Gates. In an appraisal of the effects of woman suffrage in the state, she wrote that the proportion of women in office in the state at that time (1913) was small, "as most women in this state are domestic in their habits and lives; they prize the franchise and use it independently, but their attention to politics consists chiefly in their desire, nay their determination, to see that good and honorable men are put in office."

Mrs. Gates held no illusions that women would behave very differently in political life than men did, except perhaps to make political parties "extremely cautious as to the moral qualifications of their candidates," particularly where "liquor and other moral affiliations of the candidates" were concerned.

"Women themselves too often make the mistake of urging that the vote will enable them to purify politics, and to reform the world," she wrote. "What nonsense!" Women would do as much good as men would with the same rights, she said, and would do no more harm than men would.

As for the disruptive effects of equal political rights upon domestic life, Mrs, Gates denied that giving women the franchise had had any ill effects. "On the contrary," she observed, "it tends to increase woman's poise, for she has nothing left to ask for, and so turns with delight to giving her best self, her fuller attention in the usual channels of domestic and social life, with the added zest of vital interest in civic affairs."

With the constitutional convention debates and the observations of Mrs. Gates in mind, the careers of the first three women elected to Utah's legislature will be examined in this article. It should be pointed out that effectiveness in a legislative body rarely can be determined by examining the official records, for they tell us little about personal influence patterns or about all-important committee work on bills. Journals of the House and Senate give little of the flavor of the debates and none of the "behind-the-scenes" activity; fortunately, some of this is brought out in newspaper reports and personal reminiscences. Evaluations must be made on the basis of records and reports now available — after the passage of nearly three-quarters of a century. Within these limitations, the kinds of bills sponsored by Utah's first three women legislators will be shown, as well as the success they had in getting their measures passed and the importance of some of their efforts.

Utah's two women members of the House in the Second Legislature, Eurithe K. LaBarthe of Salt Lake City and Sarah E. Anderson of Ogden, did not capture as much attention as did the more colorful state senator. However, each made her own contribution to Utah political history.

H urithe K. LaBarthe was a prominent clubwoman in Salt Lake City and the wife of an express company official. She was particularly active in the Ladies' Literary Club and was president of that group at the time she served in the legislature. Under her direction plans were made for building a clubhouse, a structure that was opened January 1, 1898. The clubhouse, located between First South and South Temple, is said to be the first clubhouse built and owned by women west of the Mississippi River.

Although she is usually referred to as a clubwoman — which sometimes is a pejorative term — Eurithe LaBarthe was also a teacher and a former principal of a school in Colorado. Perhaps because of this experience, she served as chairman of the Education Committee in the House. A native of Peoria, Illinois, she came to Utah with her husband in 1892 and became active in Democratic politics.

After her legislative service, Mrs. LaBarthe moved to Denver, where she continued to be active in women's club work. She returned to Utah for a visit, became ill, and died in Salt Lake City on November 22, 1910, at the age of sixty-five.

The so-called "High Hat Law" was Mrs. LaBarthe's most memorable contribution to Utah legislative history. Often cited as an example of the trivial interests women pursue in politics, the bill provided that "any person attending a theater, opera-house or an indoor place of amusement as a spectator shall remove headwear tending to obstruct the view of any other person." A fine of from one to ten dollars was provided for persons convicted of violating provisions of the act.

The "High Hat Law" was vigorously defended by the Ladies Literary Club historian a quarter of a century after its passage:

Only those who can recollect the high hats, the broad hats, the waving plumes and nodding flower gardens that women carried about on their heads thirty years ago, and who remember how utterly impossible it was to enjoy a performance at the theatre if you happened to sit directly behind one of these monstrosities, can fully appreciate how great a public benefactor Mrs. LaBarthe really was at the time. Although the "High Hat Law" was regarded at first as "freak legislation" by women who were averse to removing their decorative headgear in public places, it was from the first looked upon with favor by men, and it was not a great while before it received universal approval.

Mrs. LaBarthe introduced H. B. 50 establishing a curfew ordinance to keep children off the streets at night. The House rejected the bill, upon recommendation of its Committee on Municipal Corporations, on the grounds that such regulations should be within the province of the governing body of cities and towns.

She also introduced a memorial to Congress that was passed in substitute form by both houses and approved by Governor Heber M. Wells. The memorial asked that the Industrial Home on Fifth East, built by the federal government as a refuge for women and children fleeing from polygamous marriages, be granted to the State of Utah to be used for educational or charitable purposes. The memorial pointed out that the building had stood idle for several years because of "changed conditions" in the state and was badly needed by the state for educational andcharitable purposes. Apparently Congress turned a deaf ear to the prayers of this memorial, for the building was sold a few years later.

Sarah Elizabeth Nelson Anderson of Ogden, Utah's other woman House member in the Second Legislature, was described by a writer for the Ogden Standard as "naturally a strong woman, mentally and physically," and as "one of the most prominent and popular women in Ogden city and Weber county." A legislative colleague, S. A. Kenner, wrote that she was a staunch advocate of equality of man and woman. Her political views were not marked with wavering indecision, he noted, but were thoroughly formed and remained firm. "Yet she did not lose her sweet, womanly repose," he added — perhaps for the benefit of those who felt that women politicians inevitably would lose their feminine charm.

A Tribune writer took pains to point out that she was "not what might be termed a clubwoman, her large property interests and her home life with her children occupying the greater portion of her time." The writer added that she took time for reading and study and was "remarkably well posted on matters of current interest and public concern."

Born in 1853, Sarah married an Ogden physician, Dr. Porter L. Anderson, at the age of seventeen. He died in 1888, leaving her with five children. She died on December 22, 1900. Her major contribution to Utah political history was not her legislative record but her part in a lawsuit that threw Utah's registration procedures into turmoil briefly in 1895.

As has been noted, Utah women were deprived of the franchise in 1887 by the Edmunds-Tucker Act. The Enabling Act passed by Congress in 1894 provided for the election of delegates for a constitutional convention by "all male citizens over the age of twenty-one years, who have resided in said Territory for one year next prior to such election . . . . " Delegates to the convention were required to have the same qualifications.

The Enabling Act seemed to make it clear in Section 2 that voting on the ratification or rejection of the new constitution should be confined to "persons possessing the qualifications entitling them to vote for delegates under this act," or male voters only. However, the Act stated in Section 4 that the "qualified voters of said proposed State" should vote in November for or against the constitution, and women were clearly part of the "qualified voters" of the new state under the new constitution. The act further provided in Section 19 that officers for a state government might be elected during the ratification election, but gave no instructions as to eligible voters. The Utah Commission, a federally appointed board that had conducted elections in Utah since the Edmunds Act of 1882, was to make up the registration list for the election of 1895, in which voters would accept or reject the new constitution and choose a slate of state officers. The provisionsof the Enabling Act soon came into question, for some women were asking to be registered, and the often-unpopular federal commissioners apparently did not want to have to interpret the law. They suggested that all female electors be registered in alphabetical order onseparate pages, so as to be readily distinguished. The commission was relieved of its unhappy burden of decision when Sarah Anderson appeared at the office of Deputy Register Charles Tyree in Ogden's Second Precinct on August 6. Mrs. Anderson asked to be registered to vote both on the ratification of the constitution and on the election of a slate of officers for the new state; Tyree refused to register her on the ground that she was a female. The next day, Mrs. Anderson went to court, seeking a writ of mandate to compel Tyree to register her. The battery of lawyers acting on Mrs. Anderson's behalf — or perhaps using her as part of a scheme to show Democratic sympathy for woman suffrage (asthe Republican Ogden Standard asserted) —included a number of prominent Democrats. Attorneys bringing the action included both Mormons and non-Mormons, notably Franklin S. Richards, Samuel R. Thurman, and H. P. Henderson.

Sarah Anderson won the first round. Judge H. W. Smith of the District Court in Ogden ruled that women were qualified not only to vote for state officers but on adoption or rejection of the constitution as well, and he ordered Tyree to register Mrs. Anderson. The case was promptly appealed to the territorial Supreme Court by Tyree's equally prominent attorneys, which included Attorney Arthur Brown, later to be a Republican United States senator from Utah. Two of the three justices agreed with Brown that Mrs. Anderson had not been enfranchised by the Enabling Act. The Mormon member of the court, Associate Justice William H. King (later a Democratic congressman and senator from Utah) offered a dissenting opinion. Utah's women had to wait until after statehood to vote — although their hopes had been raised while the case was being appealed. During this time the Republicans in their state convention had nominated a woman to run for state superintendent of public instruction in case women should receive the franchise.

Sarah Anderson served as chairman of the House Committee on Public Health, which handled a number of important bills. However, she does not seem to have been active in introducing and getting her own bills passed. She introduced one bill (H.B. 39) regarding police and fire commissioners that was killed by an unfavorable committee report. She also introduced H. B. 26 to provide for teaching the effects of alcoholic drink and narcotics in schools. A substitute bill with these provisions was incorporated in the state's revised statutes.

Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon is the best known and most colorful of Utah's women politicians of her era. Born on July 1, 1857, in Llandudno, Wales, she came to Utah with her parents as a young child. Her father died only three days after the family's arrival in Salt Lake City, and her mother married a widower, James P. Paul. Despite the family's limited means, she dreamed of studying to become a physician. To realize this goal she saved as much as she could from her salary as a school teacher and later as a typesetter for the Deseret Evening News and the Woman's Exponent. She had been "called" by the First Presidency of the L.D.S. Church for the typesetting position and had learned to set Scandinavian type in order to earn higher wages.

In 1876 she enrolled in the pre-medical department of the University of Deseret. Two years later she was blessed and "set apart" by L.D.S. church President John Taylor for medical studies. Arriving at the University of Michigan in the fall of 1878 with slender financial resources, she began her studies, washing dishes and making beds at a boardinghouse to help defray costs. She graduated with the M.D. degree on her twenty-third birthday, July 1, 1880. Feeling that training in oratory would enable her to be more effective as a lecturer on public health, she went to Philadelphia and enrolled in both the University of Pennsylvania and the National School of Elocution and Oratory. In 1882 she received a Bachelor of Science degree from the university, the only woman in a class of seventy-five. She also received a Bachelor of Oratory degree from the school of elocution.

After returning to Utah she built a private medical practice and served as a resident physician at Deseret Hospital. On October 6, 1884, she became the fourth wife of Angus M. Cannon, a man who was twentythree years her senior and a member of the board of the hospital. After the birth of her first child, she left the state in an effort to permit her husband to avoid imprisonment by federal authorities. She went to Europe, where she visited leading hospitals; after returning to Utah she established the first training school for nurses in the state. When her second child was born she again left her medical practice to live in San Francisco. On her return she resumed her practice, specializing in the diseases of women and children.

Mattie Cannon, as she was usually known, became an ardent Democrat and also played an active role in the woman suffrage movement. Before her election to the Senate she was active in suffrage groups in Utah and spoke at a national suffrage meeting at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. In 1898 she went to Washington, D.C, to speak at a convention marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Seneca Falls declaration of women's rights and appeared before a congressional committee urging the lawmakers to give women the vote. Of this convention Dr. Cannon wrote to her friend, Emmeline B. Wells, that "Utah received her full share of honor and recognition, and was acknowledged to be in the vanguard of progress. On every occasion was her representative treated in the most courteous and considerate manner." Dr. Cannon's strong Democratic party loyalties were evident in the same letter when she described President William McKinley as "a great man, notwithstanding he is not a Democrat."

Because of her unique position as a physician, state senator, and plural wife, Mattie Cannon was the subject of several interviews by writers for leading publications. She was described by the English socialist, Beatrice Webb, as a "vivacious frank little Senator . . . ." Mrs. Webb's appraisal continued:

She was such a self-respectful vigourous pure-minded little soul: sensitive yet unself-conscious, indiscreet yet loyal. She had no training for the political career she had chosen, and I suspect her medical knowledge was as fragmentary as her economics. As a citizen I should doubt her wisdom as a legislator — and as a patient I certainly should not trust her skill in diagnosing my case. But as a friend I should rely on her warm sympathy and freedom from the meaner motives of life.

As usual, Dr. Cannon strongly defended polygamy in the Webb interview. She also offered a firm defense of plural marriage when she was interviewed a few days after her election by a writer for the San Francisco Examiner. Dr. Cannon maintained that a plural wife was not as much a slave as a single woman. She noted that "If her husband has four wives, she has three weeks of freedom every single month." She was firm in her defense of women working and engaging in worthwhile activities outside of the home:

Somehow I know that women who stay home all the time have the most unpleasant homes there are. You give me a woman who thinks about something besides cook stoves and wash tubs and baby flannels, and I'll show you, nine times out of ten, a successful mother.

She said she felt women should run for political offices, except perhaps for such offices as governor — they were too "mannish."

It is unlikely that Mattie Cannon was ever described as "mannish." She was frequently described by her contemporaries as attractive, charming, and completely feminine. With the charm went an independent spirit; she had a mind of her own and interests of her own to pursue in her legislative career. Not even the redoubtable Angus M. Cannon could control her vote.

When she took her seat in the Senate at the opening of the Second Legislature on January 11, 1897, it was noted in the Tribune that she was a little late arriving, and that a handsome bouquet of roses adorned her desk. Within a month she had introduced three bills: "An Act to Protect the Health of Women and Girl Employees" (S.B. 31), "An Act Providing for the Compulsory Education of Deaf, Dumb and Blind Children" (S.B. 22), and "An Act Creating a State Board of Health and Defining its Duties" (S.B. 27). The first made it mandatory for employers to provide "chairs, stools, or other contrivances" where women or girls employed as clerks might rest when not working." The second made education of deaf, dumb, or blind children at the state school mandatory (with certain exceptions).

The third measure was the one in which Dr. Cannon was most vitally involved, since her interest in sanitation and public health had provided much of the motivation for her entry into politics. The act became part of the revised statutes that were compiled by a special commission and provided the basis for a statewide attack on problems of sanitation and contagious disease. The act established a seven-member State Board of Health to stimulate and encourage establishment of local boards of health and to carry out a number of other functions designed to improve sanitary conditions, water supply, and disease control. Dr. Cannon was one of the first members appointed by Governor Wells to the board, all unpaid except the secretary.

The annual report of the new health board makes it clear that Dr. Cannon and other members had a difficult and frustrating first year in 1898 trying to get apathetic local officials to organize boards of health and to get public support for enforcement of a law prohibiting school attendance of children with contagious diseases. It was also clear that more legislation, with "teeth" for enforcement, was needed. During the second half of her four-year Senate term, in the Third Legislature in 1899, Dr. Cannon introduced an act that contained much needed rules and regulations in a number of public health areas. The act (S.B. 40) provided for the suppression of nuisances and contagious diseases, prescribed quarantine rules and regulations, provided for burial permits, promoted protection of water supplies, and established rules for inspection of school buildings and exclusion of persons with contagious or infectious diseases from schools.

Another measure relating to health introduced by Dr. Cannon in the Third Legislature (S.B. 1) authorized the erection of a hospital building for the Utah State School for the Deaf and Dumb. A member of the board of the school until she resigned to serve on the newly created State Board of Health, Dr. Cannon was a sympathetic supporter of the school. Another bill she introduced in 1899 providing for the teaching in the public schools of the effects of alcholic drinks and narcotics (S.B. 37) was passed by the Senate but defeated in the House. She spent considerable time studying narcotics problems; perhaps her suggestions for extensive education on drug problems would meet with a more favorable response today.

Mattie Cannon was expecting her third child during the 1899 session. She was sometimes absent from roll-call votes during the long balloting for United States senator but generally seems to have been present to pursue her interests and to serve as chairman of the Public Health Committee.

Any fears that women legislators would accept the dictation of their husbands were unfounded in the case of Mattie Cannon. Her daughter reports that in 1897 Angus M. Cannon was upset because she had voted for the excommunicated Mormon apostle, Moses Thatcher, for United States senator against his wishes and in the face of strong opposition by Mormon church leaders. His annoyance may have been compounded by the publicity his wife received when she switched her vote to Thatcher. During the first part of the prolonged balloting for senator by the two houses in joint session, Mattie Cannon appeared to be staying out of the battle, voting first for Senate President Aquila Nebeker, and later for a Democratic attorney, Orlando W. Powers. On the forty-third ballot on February 1, she suddenly switched her vote to Moses Thatcher, explaining that she feared a prolonged deadlock might mean the entrance of "an inferior dark horse, backed by Republican influence and gold . . . who might be elected." The Tribune the next day ran a large frontpage story with a two-column drawing of Dr. Cannon. "Senator Cannon prefaced her vote with an address so eloquent that despite parliamentary decorum and the rigid rules against demonstrations she was cheered and cheered again at its conclusion," the Tribune reported on February 2. She stayed with Thatcher through the fifty-third and final ballot, when Joseph L. Rawlins was elected by a bare majority of thirty-two.

Another United States senator was to be elected in 1899 during the Third Legislature. Again, according to her daughter, she defied her husband's wishes as well as the pleas of a charming and persuasive nephew, Senator Frank J. Cannon. Elected as a Republican in 1896, Frank J. Cannon faced an uphill fight for re-election in 1899 by an overwhelmingly Democratic state legislature. Needing every possible vote, he visited his Democratic aunt and asked her to support him. She refused, telling him that she could not vote for a Republican since she had been elected on the Democratic ticket. He left Dr. Mattie's home by the back door, feeling "quite depressed" by her refusal.

The Senate and House members struggled unsucessfully through 164 ballots trying to find a candidate on whom 32 members could agree. Near the end, Angus M. Cannon's brother, George Q. Cannon, counselor in the First Presidency of the Mormon church and father of Frank J., entered the race. He did not receive Mattie Cannon's vote, either. She voted from the beginning to the end of the balloting for the millionaire mining man, Alfred W. McCune, apparently unimpressed by charges (investigated by a special committee but not proved) that he tried to bribe a House member. She proved to be a highly independent woman in a body full of legislators too independent to reach a common decision in 1899. The end result of all this independence was that one of Utah's seats in the United States Senate remained vacant.

Mattie Cannon did not run for office after her term expired. She continued to serve on the State Board of Health and to practice medicine. During the last years of her life, she lived in Los Angeles, where she worked in the Graves Clinic. She died in Los Angeles July 10, 1932, and was buried in Salt Lake City. The main funeral speaker was none other than B. H. Roberts, who had predicted dire consequences if women were given the vote — to say nothing of entering office. Both faithful Democrats, Mattie Cannon and Roberts had become good friends over the years since the constitutional convention.

Utah's first three women legislators did not reform the state overnight; they did not even attempt to do so. They were typical of the earnest suffragists of their times, with political aims not markedly different from those of their male colleagues. They showed, perhaps, a greater concern for women, children, and the phyiscally handicapped. However, they left to the Populists the introduction of most of the labor and "progressive" legislation, apparently having little inclination to sponsor sweeping reforms.

Dr. Cannon was able, because of her professional training, to help the state move forward in the area of public health. But even in this area, the approach was one of "gradualism," moving at a moderate rate and seeking to build public support.

Except for the memorial asking for the Industrial Home, the three women legislators did not sponsor any of the many pieces of legislation that sought favors or funds from the federal government. If some of their bills seem trivial — notably the "High Hat Law" — a day-by-day reading of the legislative journals shows that their colleagues also introduced much legislation that was equally trivial and catered to parochial interests. In short, their legislative records need neither a contrived defense nor unwarranted praise. They were about the same as those of their fellow legislators, containing both the significant and the relatively unimportant.

Governor Wells was reported by Beatrice Webb to have said that the women in the Senate and House in 1897 had not accomplished anything except a law prohibiting large hats at places of amusement. And this law, he added, had been passed "out of courtesy" by the men. Perhaps he signed it for the same reason. If the governor ignored the more substantial victories of the women legislators, he inadvertently made a vital point about women in politics before the turn of the century — and perhaps today as well. They were always reliant upon the "courtesy" of the men. With militant tactics they would have accomplished nothing. With quiet charm and gentle persuasion they contributed much to Utah's Second Legislature.

Give us the power and we'll dispel, The reign of tyrants born of hell: From men's unblushing demon deeds, Her earnest soul for freedom pleads.(Woman's Exponent, 22 [January 15, 1894], 81.)

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